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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ: If patience is a virtue, we’re not a very virtuous nation. Here we are, only three days after Thanksgiving, and I’ve already been informed ten or twelve times that Santa’s on his way. I hope the poor fellow’s packed a couple of changes of socks and underwear, because it seems he’s gonna be on the road for quite a while. I wonder if old St. Nick ever muttered the phrase: “Kyrie Eleison”?
We as human beings—and especially as Americans living in a land of plenty in an age of instant communication and overnight shipping—appear to have a real problem with patience, don’t we?
It seems that the ice is hardly melted in our coolers from our Memorial Day barbeques before we’re hearing firecrackers for the 4th of July. No sooner does that sound fade than ads for the Back-to-School sales arrive. Halloween pumpkins show up the Tuesday after Labor Day, Thanksgiving turkeys gobble up October, and Christmas carols get played in November—if marketeers and over-eager consumers are even willing to wait that long.
It’s as if we’re in a competition to rush headlong from one big “high” in life to the next, without any pause to take a deep breath. We want to leap forward, with no appreciation of the little gifts and joys and even the little challenges our Lord gives us in the normal routines of life. I’ve got to ask, “What’s the big rush?”
Certainly the Lord wants you to be about His business, and to make good use of your time and all the gifts which He provides you. He advises His people not to dally, but to work in His vineyard and His kingdom while it is still day, before the night comes and no one can work.
Yet is your work directed toward that which spoils, or is it focused upon the things which will last? Are you annoyed and consumed by the insignificant, or do your life, your words, and your actions point you and others toward the cross of Christ and the hope it gives you for eternity? “Heaven and earth will pass away,” Jesus tells His disciples, “but my words will never pass away.”
When rightly expressed, the Church does not dwell too much or too long on the things of this world, nor get caught up in them. We as Christians are to have a different way about us—a different tone, a different vocabulary, a different look and feel and sound. We certainly are to have a different outlook toward life, death, and the things of the end times. We even have a different calendar, even though the secular world has tried to steal away from us Christmas and Easter, Halloween and St. Valentine’s Day.
Well, today I’m going to steal something back from the world, and beat it to the punch: I’m going to be the first to wish you a Happy New Year. We’re ringing out the old and ringing in the new today as we enter a new church year with the first Sunday in Advent. And as we prepare and look ahead to observing once again the first coming of our Lord in Bethlehem, we really ought to be more concerned with looking ahead, and preparing ourselves for His return.
As joyous and happy as Christmas can be, as much as we anticipate our reunions with friends and family, it pales when compared with the eternal bliss and the heavenly union we will have with our God and with all the saints in the hereafter.
But for now, we wait. And waiting is difficult, especially when we’re so conditioned to being pushed, pushed, pushed by an impatient world. As little boys and little girls, we rush to grow up, wanting to shave or wear make-up, to date and to drive, and to be done with the learning and on to the earning. In the prime of our lives, we rush to accumulate the material things of this world, so we can accelerate the time in which we no longer use our vocations to serve God and our neighbor, but instead are served by others. When we’re ill or injured, we want a shot or a pill offering an instant cure, or a quick and painless surgery without a long recovery and without the hard work of physical therapy. We want to get rich quick, lose 30 pounds in 30 days, stop smoking today, enjoy our best life now.
It seems the only things we aren’t in a hurry to have take place are our own deaths, or the coming of the end of the world. We just want that next “hit” of excitement, fun, attention, or whatever makes us feel better about being a dying person in a dying world.
I’m no psychologist, but I’ve got a very simple theory about why so many of us are so impatient about rushing forward from one big worldly event or holiday to the next: Fear. We just don’t want to confront the reality that the good times won’t roll on forever, even if God’s Word and the faith that Word gives us tells us the good times will be so much better on the other side.
We also fear what we’re going to have to go through to get there. We have observed what others have experienced on their journey through life and into death. Even with our Savior awaiting us on the other side, His open arms ready to gently and lovingly receive us, we hesitate and draw back.
How crazy is that? We want to grab all the shallow and perishable things this world has to offer, right now, today—but we want to shove away into the far distant future the rich and glorious and eternal blessings the world’s Creator has prepared and promised to us. In that, we’re sometimes no better than those who have no faith at all.
We worry about the planet’s eco-system, the health care system, the global balance of power, the economy, terrorism, who controls Congress and the White House and the Supreme Court, and on and on and on. We read books and watch movies about the end of the world, fretting and speculating about when it will come and what it will be like, instead of simply preparing ourselves for it every day as Jesus has instructed us.
And prepare you must, for you really don’t know which will come first: Your personal end, or the end of all things. Jesus told His disciples that at the time of His return, things will be scary indeed: Nations in anguish. People perplexed by the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men fainting from terror, fearful of the things to come. The universe itself will be shaken.
Frightening stuff, certainly. But you are to be ready. You have been warned many times, and even here: “Be careful,” Jesus tells us, “or your hearts will be weighed down with indulgence, drunkenness, and the anxieties of life.” Sounds an awful lot like how many people prepare for and celebrate holidays, doesn’t it?
And Jesus goes on to say: “that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap.” And not just upon Christians, either. The Savior warns: “it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth.”
There you have it, then. In a nutshell, the end is going to be frightening, tumultuous, unpredictable, sudden, and widespread. It’s almost enough to make you want to die in Christ and go to heaven early, isn’t it? And yet, in our fearfulness and in our desire to be in control, we would prefer to stave off either of those two potential ends for as long as possible, if not indefinitely.
Fearfulness and control are not what our Lord desires for you to have, though. Instead, He wants you to have confidence in His promises and your will surrendered unto Him. But how can you have such trust? How can you calm your fears about your own death, or your apprehensions and terrors about the awesome coming of the Lord’s new kingdom? When you see the sign of that fig tree sprouting its leaves, and all that comes to mind about fig leaves is your desperate need to hide the nakedness of your sin, where can you turn?
Instead of turning from the tumult and the anguish and the pain, turn toward it. Instead of averting your eyes and hiding your face, stand up and lift up your heads. Do not turn away, but gaze upon the perplexing, frightening sight of your God—turned away at the inn, rejected in His hometown, rebuffed in His temple, driven out of His holy city dragging a cross to die for your redemption and to bring the kingdom of God near to you.
And bring it to you He has, here at St. Paul and in other places like it: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded.”
“Receive the Holy Spirit; if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.”
“Take, eat; this is my body, given for you. Take, drink; this cup is the new testament in my blood which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.”
In Word and Sacrament, He continues to bring His kingdom to you. Not just near to you, but directly to you, in you, and through you—so that you might not be fearful as death’s relentless march bears down on you, nor anxious as the passage of time brings the great and terrible day of the Lord closer and closer for you and for all.
Be always on the watch, then. Pray that you may escape all that will befall this sinful world that has rejected your God and Savior, knowing with certainty that His kingdom comes and His will is done even without your prayers.
Strengthened by His weakness; secured by His loss; bought by His death; and raised to new life by His resurrection. With all your sins forgiven and your place at His banquet assured, you are prepared and equipped to continue to face the temptations and the trials of this life. You may stand up and lift up your head in confidence as your final redemption draws near.
Have no fear; it’s a Happy New Year.
In the holy name of Jesus, Amen.
